LAHORE, Feb 23: The Higher Education Commission will grade private sector chartered universities after assessing their progress reports with regard to their space, facilities, infrastructure, faculty, working capital, endowment fund and quality of education.
This was stated by Governor Khalid Maqbool while chairing a meeting of private sector chartered universities at the Governor's House on Wednesday. He said the private universities' fee structure issue would be discussed in the next meeting.
The marathon meeting discussed HEC requirements, academic programmes, curricula and illegal campuses of other provinces' chartered universities. HEC secretary Dr Sohail Naqvi, Punjab special secretary (higher education) Nazir Saeed and representatives of 15 private universities attended the meeting and presented their progress reports.
The governor said the HEC had pointed out deficiencies in private universities. But, it was encouraging that most of them had responded positively and improving their facilities. He said the government would support private universities and hope that they would also come up to the expectation.
Responding to the demand that the HEC should also sponsor research projects in private universities, Dr Naqvi said the new schemes being launched by the commission would remove the difference between public and private universities. The governor said the government would ask the public sector universities to enter into arrangements with private universities for joint research projects.
Dr Naqvi told the meeting that Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) would soon give a $10 million project to promote research activities in the country. Every university would be eligible to submit research projects and seek funds from the JICA programme.
He said the HEC was also offering 200 foreign PhD scholarships for university faculty members every year. He said half of these scholarships meant for private universities. Similarly, the HEC was offering 1,000 local PhD scholarships on the basis of a test. The faculty of private universities could win any number of scholarships.
He said the HEC was also ready to share 50 per cent salary of a foreign faculty hired by private universities. But, the foreign faculty should fulfil the HEC criteria.
Dr Naqvi said the HEC had also joined hands with an organization working in the Asia-Pacific region for the promotion of education. It would help equalize Pakistani degrees at world level.
He said the federal cabinet had imposed conditions that each university seeking charter should have 10-acres of land, Rs50 million working capital as well as Rs50 million endowment fund. The endowment fund condition was imposed for the security of students, he added.
Representatives of universities said the endowment fund was no more feasible as, when the condition was imposed, bank interest rates were around 22 per cent but now it was merely two to three per cent.
Considering the issue, the governor said he would take up the issue in the Chancellor Committee's next meeting. The representatives also demanded that the HEC should open its centres in provincial metropolis for verification of degrees and transcripts of students.
Nazir Saeed told the meeting that the bill to grant university status to the Institute of South Asia was being considered by the Punjab Assembly's standing committee.
ILLEGAL CAMPUSES: The meeting was told that the Punjab government has suggested the HEC to develop a criteria or a minimum standard examination for the "two or three-year old students" studying in non-accredited universities so that the aggrieved students could also get recognized degrees.
Mr Saeed said the government had suggested that it could advise non-accredited universities' students to do some more credit hours study in one or the other accredited university.
He said the HEC was issuing 'Parent Alert' ads and people were quite aware while selecting universities for higher studies. He said the private universities should function according to the existing laws and ordinances. No private university could open its sub-campus before 10 years.
With regard to the University of Central Punjab's (UCP) five colleges working in different cities, the secretary said the education department had moved a summary to the Punjab cabinet to declare those colleges as constituent colleges of the UCP.
About illegal campuses opened by private universities in other provinces, he said legal notices had been served on the illegal campuses in the Punjab. Mr Saeed said the education secretaries' meeting had decided that the provincial governments should ask the universities to close down their illegal campuses in other provinces.
The Punjab government had informed other provinces in this regard but no action had so far been taken. He claimed that there was no illegal campus of Punjab's private universities in other provinces.
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